Lincoln forestry firm plans subdivision

BURLINGTON, Maine — A Lincoln businessman hopes to create a 13-unit subdivision on 303 acres off Route 188 next year as part of plans to maintain his forest management business, he said Friday.

If the planning board approves his plan, Brian Souers, owner of Treeline Inc., will retain about 156 acres of the parcel, which is about a half-mile from the town office and local supermarket, as wood lots. The balance, which has already been harvested, will be part of the subdivision.

“As a forestry company our goal is to increase our forestland base,” Souers said Friday. “To do that, we would prefer to just buy land and never sell any, but we would run out of money that way. Typically we have to sell a portion of what we buy [as housing lots] to continue to build up our land base. That’s what drives this, to be able to fund our procurement of forestland.”

Souers’ company purchased the 303 acres last year at an undisclosed price.

He hopes to gain a permit to build four 2- to 4-acre lots for housing along Route 188, with the rest of the land behind the road becoming nine seasonal camps or lots for camps of 5 to 28 acres, he said.

“There is a demand for recreational properties even in this poor economy,” Souers said, “anything from a couple acres to 100 acres of wood lot land or forestland that would be built upon minimally, if at all.

“A project like this does not sell quickly,” he added. “We would expect to sell a few lots per year. Most of those will be for people who have low use [of the land]. They might visit the property once to four times a year, though you could get somebody who wants to build a house on the lots.”

The planning board is due to discuss Souers’ plan at its meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, town First Selectman Dennis Kingman said.

“It’s in the preliminary stages,” Kingman said of Souers’ plan. “He has talked around some ideas but I have heard very little about them. I know the land because it’s right across the street from my house.”

If developed to its logical conclusion, the town subdivision would most closely resemble the subdivisions his company has developed off Relocation Road and the Piscataquis River in Howland and on Jordan Lane in Chester, Souers said.

It would also add to the town’s valuation by several hundred thousand dollars, he said.

Treeline is a 45-worker company that offers forest management, wood harvesting, trucking, road and site construction, wood purchasing and the buying and selling of used vehicles or equipment, according to its Web site, www.treelineinc.biz.